Climate change
With a variety of initiatives, Zurich is taking an increasingly active role in addressing one of the century's major issues.
With predictions that extreme weather events such as hurricanes, wildfires or floods could increase in frequency or severity, the subject of climate change has become a major concern of the new century.
As a global leader in risk management, Zurich is not only engaging actively in the debate, but has also established an initiative to develop products and services that address the evolving risks associated with this issue. At the same time, we are taking steps to manage our own carbon footprint.
Although our businesses around the world have already been addressing customer needs and expectations in the area of climate-related risk, the new initiative enables us to take a consistent and more focused approach. It has three elements:
- An internal Climate Office that will energize our 60,000 employees and will help to develop risk products and solutions. It will be embedded in our underwriting infrastructure
- A Climate Change Advisory Council, consisting of internal functional leaders and external experts, to advise Zurich's management on strategic and operational issues associated with climate change
- An applied research program that builds off of partnerships with organizations and institutions that can bring multi-disciplinary expertise to bear on the critical economic, finance and policy issues associated with climate change.
Links with universities
As the first partnership in this third element, Zurich will fund a distinguished visitors program at the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, and the school will assess our carbon footprint to help us manage carbon emissions in a meaningful and sustainable manner.
Through partnerships with national and international organizations and institutions, we will steadily build our expertise in addressing climate change issues and challenges.
In another link with higher education, Zurich Canada is working with Vancouver's Simon Fraser University to support research examining options for adaptation to extreme weather events caused by climate change. A joint program in 2008 is bringing together Canadian and international experts to examine the challenges and publicize the issues. These include community impacts, health risks, fresh water supply, crop and food adaptation, energy production and distribution, new technologies and displaced populations. The program will then recommend policy options to government, industry, and community leaders.
In the UK, Zurich has become one of the first signatories to the six ClimateWise principles drawn up by the Association of British Insurers' (ABI). These commit participants to agree to:
- Lead in risk analysis
- Inform public policy-making
- Support climate awareness among customers
- Incorporate climate change into investment strategies
- Reduce the environmental impact of business
- Report and be accountable
Initiatives around the world
Zurich will submit an annual statement of work undertaken to implement these principles, and the ABI will publish an annual independent industry-wide audit.
This fresh impetus builds on initiatives already established in our organization. Europe, the US and Australia all have products that address elements of climate-related risk. Canada, the US and Europe have linked with experts on these issues. Individual business units, including Switzerland, have taken it upon themselves to develop and implement carbon management strategies. Farmers in the US offers discounts to drivers of hybrid vehicles.
Our Global Energy business unit's alternative energy program has met with significant success since its launch. It has created particular interest in California, where government legislation requires the state's major utilities to produce at least 20 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by 2010, with four percent of this power from solar-electric technologies.
As an example of our employees' engagement in the climate change issue at a practical and personal level, six of them visited Sri Lanka in 2007 to help restore mangrove forests destroyed in the disastrous tsunami of December 2004. More than 100 people from 16 countries applied to join the project, organized by Earthwatch Institute of Europe. The successful six came from Australia, Canada, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US. We are recruiting more volunteers in 2008, and on returning to their home countries, each of them will become a champion for corporate responsibility.
